


Eric, Where Do You Come From?

by WaldosAkimbo



Series: Quick and Dirty Good Omens Crack or Drabbles [14]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Eric on Eric on Eric, Other, weird demon biology this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27141310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaldosAkimbo/pseuds/WaldosAkimbo
Summary: The Disposable Demon (Eric) and another Disposable Demon (Eric) trek on down through Hell for a little get together with the Disposable Demons (Erics). And boy howdy is it weird.
Relationships: Eric The Disposable Demon/ Eric the Disposable Demon
Series: Quick and Dirty Good Omens Crack or Drabbles [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789003
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Eric, Where Do You Come From?

**Author's Note:**

> Another "angels and demons have to have weird biology so let's think about it" fic? In two days?? More likely than you think.

The ceiling drips something cold and a bit gritty on Eric’s cheek as he follows the tunnels. Wet rough-hewn rock scatters shadows along his feet and dances around him wherever he flashes the torch, occasionally blinding himself. But he continues, drawn in by the thread in his chest.

Another Eric holds his hand and squeezes it whenever they stop so that Eric can check the forks, sniff the air a bit, and take left or right as needed. They duck as a unit to avoid hitting the ceiling when it gets too low and stretch themselves back up when it gets too high without any curiosity as to what is gurgling and hissing in the shadows above them.

“Have you been to one of these before?” Eric asks in the back and bumps into Eric. “Ooh. Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Eric scrubs his cheek with the ratty wool of his scarf before he glances back. “No,” he says. “But I was on assignment with someone who had.”

“Any tips?”

“Just mind anything gets too close to yours eyes.”

“Yeah?” Eric nods slowly, his hand wandering up Eric’s arm until he loops it around his elbow. Always more comfort in pairs. Groups. Giant, swarming mobs. It’s been too long since they’ve all been together and Eric’s very bones ache with the anticipation. Like coming home. “That makes sense. You seen when they dumped him in with the hell hounds?”

It doesn’t matter which one, specifically. A legion has always been a steady diet for the creatures, so it was fairly common enough and, of course, _yes_. He has.

“His eyes popped like jelly.”

“Mm.”

“I’m hoping I get roasted instead. Seems less crunchy than, y’know.”

And the two Erics manage to look at each other before they say, “ _teeth_ ,” and laugh in a companionable way. Eric doesn’t say how he saw someone get burned alive and it struck through him like lightning. How he tends to shy away from fire and does his best to keep up with the filing. Good hard work and nobody knows you’re there. Then you don’t get to choke on the smoke with your skin peeling off in bubbly sheets.

Worse, he doesn’t want to go alone. Alone would be awful. No, Eric wants to die surrounded by the rest of himself, he thinks.

They take the left tunnel this time and the thread vibrates faster in his chest. He’s not even sure if Eric feels it, the way he clings at the elbow, but it is vibrant, and it is sweet and Eric smooths a hand over his breastbone to keep his ribs from cracking open in the excitement.

“Did they pick one yet?” Eric asked quietly behind Eric.

“Don’t know,” Eric said. “Not that I heard.”

“Weird.”

“Hmm?”

“Usually we hear something,” Eric says, but he’s a bit young and thinks fires are cleansing, so Eric doesn’t know how much credit he should give him.

“Well, we’re gonna find out anyway.”

They press on, until the stones start to honeycomb and split off into waxy fissures. It was getting steadily colder the further into the tunnels Eric lead them, but they start to feel a glowing heat now. Eric takes his hand off Eric’s elbow and tugs at his scarf, makes some joke about what they’re likely to find around the corner, and slots himself up against Eric again when they remain quiet too long.

“Are you nervous?” Eric asks, resting his head on Eric’s shoulder.

“No,” Eric says like a perfect liar. “Not really.”

“I thought it would be louder,” Eric continues before they come across a large papery-white wall and stop together. There is a bright light behind it, shining through like the sun through smoky quartz. Each Eric knits their eyebrows together in comical unison and the Eric hanging on the first reaches out to touch it before the Eric leading takes his hand and pulls back. “What?”

“Hold on a second,” Eric whispers. He’s surprised his voice doesn’t shake with how much he feels the inside of his body vibrating. He’s surprised his vision is clear, with the quake of his soul. “Let me just….”

Eric tilts his head, his hair leaning further and the tips of his stalks brush the wall before he stumbles his way onto an epiphany and his eyes, black and beautiful, pop open.

“It’s—”

But Eric covers his mouth, first with his hand, and then with a hurried and hopeful kiss. Eric jolts. Perhaps Eric really is filled with lightning and he’s shocked his companion, but it might just be the kiss that does it, because Eric doesn’t suddenly crumble to ash. He softens and loops his arms around Eric, petting the back of his head. When they break apart, Eric nudges the first with his nose.

“Well,” he says, his mouth cracking with a little smile. “I can help guard your eyes if you like?”

Eric scoffs and turns away. He’s going to deny it, again, but when Eric covers his chest with his hand and they feel that little tug again, he decides _best not_ and goes quiet.

The door before them groans, the heavy churn of stone and water as it breaks loose and begins to withdraw. They watch, each of them throwing a hand up over their eyes and wince as the bright light within blinds them. There’s something like speech, not quite, gurgling and spilling over itself in the chamber and the warmth floods out to them like hands, enveloping in the entryway.

Eric blinks first, his eyes stinging as the thread in his chest threatens to yank clean through him, no doubt with the force of a sickle. It takes a moment for the hazy ash to settle into shapes, but he sees the giant chamber somewhere deep in Hell, tucked away to be forgotten. It smells of moss and rain, and the chamber echoes as a hundred or more waiting Erics shift about. Many of them have stripped down to a clumsy shift and threadbare jeans. Some still have coats. Vests. A few are unravelling their scarfs at the edges. They meander in a loose circle around the center, where another Eric is sitting on a flat slab, his ankles crossed, leaning back on his hands, and his face placid and peaceful as it tilts up towards a bright dripping bulb like melted honey that distends from the ceiling. Something drips off it and lands on his cheek and it doesn’t look cold or gritty like the hallway, though Eric wipes his cheek again in sympathy. The Eric on the slab simply dips the honey-covered finger into his mouth and cleans it off with his tongue, relaxing back.

There are other Erics close by, reaching out to pet his head, his shoulders, his hips, his knees. They don’t hurry here. Nobody pokes them. Nobody prods them. Nobody rips or rends them. Eric on the slab isn’t aggravated, trapped, desperate. He looks so peaceful under the light and the Eric with his heart threaded through steps into the parting crowd, dropping his scarf first. His coat second. He is helped up steps he doesn’t see in his haze and then his shirt is slipped off over his head. Someone is tugging on a rope belt and someone else is massaging his hands and someone is putting their honey fingers into his mouth. There is no use turning away. The thread in his chest would snap and he is certain that would be worse than burning and smoke.

Eric at the door hums giddily, joining the rest of them. He was a bit loud for the room, trying to speak, until someone reached up and waited for a drop, then smeared it over his mouth. But even then, dancing in the slow circle, he makes his his way towards the slab to follow the first Eric. Nobody stops him. That’s not the point.

The Eric sitting back opens his eyes, which have gone the same color as the honey above them. Eric, being stripped and presented, looks up and wonders at the pulsing thing above them and wonders at that song in the back of his mind that says _home, finally, home._ He watches a line drip slowly down towards him with no sense to shut his eyes, for the gold to splash across him and blind him, before familiar hands that look exactly like his own suddenly cover his face and familiar lips exactly like his own brush his cheek.

“Mind anything gets too close to your eyes,” the Eric whispers fondly. Eric smiles. Not even sure why. He leans back against a piece of himself even as another rises up and grabs his hips, pulling him closer.

The room buzzes. It hums. Eric vibrates with the notes that Eric spills into his ears as Eric cracks him open as Eric holds his hands as Eric enters him as Eric flows around him as Eric melts as Eric fills as Eric is Eric is Eric is Eric is.

Eric is.

_Home._

**\---**

When Eric wakes up, still laying in the half-beating mass of limbs of the rest of him, he squints towards the dull light towards the center of the room and groans against a dull headache. There’s three Erics under him who join in the choir and they start to detangle as their senses return to them. Some will start gathering up their clothes. Others will gather up the bodies that didn’t make it through the ritual. Not as many as one might think. Creating new Erics takes a lot of matter and the convergence at the center helped with a lot of that.

The Convergence lays at the center under the dull light. They breathe together, forehead to shoulder, their bodies not so much the familiar form the rest of them take but a soup of comfort and contentment. It will break apart in the coming days, shatter, reform into the familiar shapes and sizes of the rest of the Erics. They’ll pick from the piles of clothes waiting at the rim and crawl slowly out of the tunnels until they find the rest of them and are explained their duties. And then they might get a call to come back. Again. Again. Again, until their chest aches so much that they need to create life. Eric’s poor attempt to play God, if only with himself.

Either way, the Erics file out. The last one watches in on them on their stone bed and smiles fondly before resetting the paper-white door. He picks up the discarded torch at the entrance and shines it along the walls, gives a happy hum, and climbs.


End file.
